1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed generally to telecommunications systems and, particularly, to improvements in providing presence information.
2. Description of the Related Art
Presence-based communications applications are entering the mainstream telecommunications environment. In such applications, a user maintains one or more “contact lists” of other parties whose presence status is to be monitored and displayed to the user. If the other party is determined to be “present,” the user's contact list will display the available status. The user can then contact the other party.
Often, however, the management of contact lists can become cumbersome, particularly to the inexperienced or casual user. For example, over a period of time, a user may continually add “buddies” or contacts to the contact list, while neglecting to remove or update “stale” buddies, i.e., those who have not been contacted in a while. When this happens, the number of “active” buddies on the list can be overwhelmed by the number of stale buddies. In this case, it can become difficult to identify useful contact information.